Beautiful, smart, instinctive and very 'cool', this is the profile of Xander Cage (Vin Diesel 'Pitch Black') starred in 'XXX' by Rob Cohen ('The Fast and the Furious'); Xander is a kind of anarchic new-age willing to wave the banner of free thought in the face of anyone with business at the limit, I would say even well beyond the law. Extreme sports fanatic is an internet celebrity in the world thanks to its underground video that he partakes of memorable feats, like jump off a bridge with the car of a senator or flaunt the banner slogan of 'free thought in a free state'.

Too bad that his life is about to undergo a sharp turn when the CIA was selected as a possible candidate for its covert operations. Agent Gibson (Samuel L. Jackson / 'Jackie Brown') will be the contact of Xander, 'X' to his friends during his infiltration from the terrorist group 'Anarchy 99' formed by ex-Russian military. The group, which is subsidized with prostitution, theft, smuggling and so on, is planning the destruction of key cities in the world with the intention of unleashing a holocaust purifier.

Above all, new ideas and an original: a bad guy with the brain semifuso and delusions of grandeur (Marton Csokas / 'The Lord of the Rings'), a beautiful dark lady dark and wandering in the film without even showing a breast (Asia Argento / 'Scarlet Diva'), a handful of thugs and idiots obviously expendable, another bunch of scantily clad women in provocative and very helpful, a weapon of mass destruction from the fanciful name of 'silent night' and, of course, he ... the hero recruited according to the tried and tested scheme 'Nikita': either cooperate or prison!

Dressed up with a plot laughable dialogue for brain-injured, played to the limits of acceptance, but also made a very bad. Given that I'm a fan of action movies, best exaggerated, I could not find irritating numerous sequences 'extreme' patently artificial. Developments lack credibility, very good stunt, but lack credibility and sets, again, little credibility can only give a result: not credible. It feels like watching a movie by Joel Schumacher 'first way', the Batman to speak, where explosions and colored lights everywhere should fill a scene in itself thin and devoid of 'appeal'.

The film is totally dedicated to the image: beautiful people in beautiful rooms that makes things beautiful, beautiful tattoos showing, too bad there is no other; Add to this, the total stereotyping of Russian (the wicked and decadent) and Americans (always ready to save the next) and there remains nothing but to wait impatiently for the final word.

Trivia: the stand-in for Vin Diesel, Harry O'Connor, died in a parachute crashed against a pier of a bridge by turning the scene of the fall with the Chevrolet.

The gem: a supertechnological Xander gets a pair of binoculars which works just like the legendary X-ray glasses from the seventies.